New Federal Plan Forward On Hanford Tank Farms Coming Soon

The federal government plans to release a major document early next week that could guide a couple of decades worth of cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. This is important because it maps out decisions like where to bury the radioactive waste, and how much to leave in place.

The new document maps out decisions like where to bury the radioactive waste, and how much to leave in place.

Credit U.S. Department of Energy

The new document is huge. Try 6,000 page huge. It’s taken about 10 years to draft. Overall, the plan says the department would prefer to clean up about 99 percent of the tank waste left over from World War II and the Cold War.

The rest of that gunk, or about 560,000 gallons, would be left where it is. That’s along with the tanks where it’s currently stored. So says Carrie Meyer, with the Department of Energy.

“And so we could do some sort of grout or other process to fill the tank and close it in place.”

Meyer says the document also says the Energy department would remove and treat some soil around the tanks. The plan also directs cleanup of the Fast Flux Test Facility and which kinds of low-level radioactive waste would be buried in trenches at Hanford.

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Now to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. Workers are readying pumping equipment at a slow-leaking radioactive waste tank in case the leak gets worse. A newly released report details why the tank became unstable.